The Twelve Brand Archetypes
Modelled upon Carl Gustav Jung's Archetypes, Margaret Mark comes up with twelve different human archetypes gathered around the four kinds of motivators which drive humans - Stability, Belonging, Mastery and Independence. She extends this further and presents brands as archetypes - in essence, every brand personifies something and she presents a way to create affinity between a user and a product by tagging it to an archetype. The twelve archetypes proposed for use with branding - Sage, Innocent, Explorer, Ruler, Creator, Caregiver, Magician, Hero, Outlaw, Lover, Jester, and Regular Person thus define basic human traits and nothing more. She notes,
The creators of great brands have intuited this simple truth. For example, superstars in the film and entertainment industry, and the agents who manage them, understand that their continued popularity does not hinge simply on the quality or success of the films they make or the visibility they attain. Rather, it depends on creating, nourishing, and continuously reinterpreting a unique and compelling identity or “meaning.” Madonna changes her lifestyles and hairstyles, but she is always the outrageous Rebel. Offscreen and on, Jack Nicholson is the bad-boy Outlaw. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks imbue every role they play with the spirit of the wide-eyed Innocent.
These identities are not only consistent—they are compelling. Love ’em or hate ’em, you can’t help but notice ’em. In fact, we can’t help but be mesmerized by who they are and what they implicitly stand for.
These archetypes are categorized into four groups
Independence: Longing for a Better World(The Yearning for Paradise)
Innocent, Explorer and Sage
Mastery: Making your Mark(Leaving the Thumbprint on the world)
Hero, Outlaw, Magician
Belonging: Social Bonding(No Man is an Island)
Regular Guy, Lover, Jester
Stability: Societal Organization(Providing Structure to the World)
Caregiver, Creator, Ruler
Note: I have deliberately used product in place of brand as this is more applicable to a product positioning and advertising than a brand positioning. A brand, after all, is a reflection of the products it showcases.
Innocent
An innocent wants to experience paradise, wants to be happy, is scared of doing something wrong which can invite punishment and thereby wants to do things the correct way. He is faithful and optimistic by nature. On one extreme, he can represent a desire for purity, goodness and simplicity, and on the other extreme, he can represent denial and repression.
Use in Branding
1. The product is a simple answer to an identifiable problem
2. The product is associated with goodness, morality, simplicity, nostalgia and childhood
3. The product is associated with cleanliness, health and virtue
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Project Management and User Experience to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.